updated 12:48 pm EDT, Thu August 16, 2012

RIM confirms resolution to aid development

When Research in Motion's two new BlackBerry phones launch next year, they will do so with HD displays. The devices' resolutions were confirmed in a post today on the BlackBerry Developer Blog. The troubled handset maker released the information this early in order to aid BlackBerry developers, who had previously alerted the company that resolution changes can make it difficult to develop and optimize apps.

RIM will be launching two new phones early next year, an all touchscreen affair and another model bearing the company's signature QWERTY keyboard. The touchscreen device will sport a resolution of 1280x768, the same resolution seen on the reference device the company first used to show off BlackBerry 10. The model with a hardware keyboard will have a 720x720 resolution.

Today's announcement also carried news that the company would be using the two form factors' resolutions as a standard going forward. Touchscreen BlackBerry handsets will sport 16:9 aspect ratios, while keyboard devices will have 1:1 ratios.

Notably, the announcement also contained a tacit admission that the company is already at work on future BlackBerry 10 devices. The blog post points out that future touchscreen devices will have a 1280x720 resolution, not the 1280x768 one seen on the forthcoming all touch version.

It just occurred to me: Blackberry 10 will need to be two completely different UI's: One 16:9, touch - the other, 1:1 and non-touch. Holy crap. These guys have trouble releasing one good interface. How are they going to manage two?! And this is GOOD for developers?!